Author's Notes: Uh.. hey. This is my first YGO fanfic, and my first fanfic in a while. And.. I'm not entirely sure what this story will be about. It's yet another one of those stories where Ryou is given his ring for the first time, Yami Bakura shows up, and all kinds of crazy shizzit happens, but I wanted to make it a little more detailed than most. I've seen a lot of fics where Bakura just POPS out of the ring and Ryou all but takes it in stride - personally, I think coming into the possession of an item possessed by an evil spirit, which in turn possesses you, calls for a lot more psychological drama.

It was also sort of inspired by the short story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman, a first person account of a woman slowly going insane - hence the title. While I'm really fond of shounen-ai and Ryou/Bakura is my favorite pairing, I'm not sure if this will end up that way or not. From what I've seen of the show, it's hard to tell where Ryou ends and his yami begins - maybe it's just because he doesn't have a transformation animation like Yugi, but still.

I'll probably stray from the absolute manga cannon understanding of some things and in certain details (there's even an original character, omg! Don't worry, she's just a cat.) but hopefully everyone's in character. But - I might not make Yami Bakura as bloodyminded and psychopathic as some would like. Why's that? Don't worry, he'll explain it to Ryou himself.

Anyway! Naturally, I don't own YGO or any of these characters or concepts. Those belong to Mr. Takahashi and probably Viz and 4Kids to some extent.

Prologue

A searing, sand-choked gust of wind blasted through the bazaar, upsetting and overturning a few of the lighter wares out on display in the hand-built stands - but everyone and everything here was more than used to sand, wind and heat.

The archeologist had to pause, smiling as he took in the scene with a touch of nostalgia. It looked as though it could have come straight out of one of the many cinematic adventures in the Near-Orient that had been so popular when he was a child. Those movies had a hand in inspiring his lifelong obsession with this ancient part of the world, the cradle of civilization - the home of Sumer, Babylon, but most of all, Egypt.

His father had been similarly enraptured with the land of the Nile; in fact, he came from a line of explorers, anthropologists and Egyptologists that could be traced back to Victorian times. But his own son had never taken up the family interest, and his father couldn't imagine why.

So the archeologist had hoped getting his son a gift at this rural, Egyptian bazaar might inspire some fascination with the land it came from. Part of him wanted to take the extra effort to get to Cairo, go to a real store and get him a real gift - it was his son's seventeenth birthday, afterall - but that was hours away from the dig site, and he suspected a mass-produced souvenir would lack the charm of a locally hand-crafted trinket.

He perused the selection of shops, and found little but pottery, cloths and silks, and camels. Disappointment started to set in, as not surprisingly, most of the shops only sold practical items. He was about to give in to temptation and go to the capitol when one small shop, off to the side and wedged between a few far larger ones, caught his eye.

Or rather, something laying on the table did. Drawn to it magnetically, he stared into the stylized eye set into the middle of a dull golden triangle. It looked like some sort of metal wall decoration, and stood out from the knock-offs and cheap rubbish that surrounded it, despite its wear. The triangle was in the middle of a large ring, and off of the ring hung several odd little pendulums that jangled softly when he lifted it. There was a loop at the top, but any cord that might have been in it was long gone - it was dingy and scuffed, though he suspected it may have looked like gold at one point, it was undoubtedly a reproduction of some sort. The symbol and decoration didn't seem indicative of any time period or Egyptian dynasty he was familiar with, though...

"You like the ring?" The thick, accented voice of the shopkeeper spoke up, rousing the archeologist out of the trance he had slipped into. "It is very cheap," the keeper urged, a tone of desperation creeping into his voice. Puzzled, the archeologist glanced between the shopkeep and the ring - why would he be so eager to get rid of it? Was it stolen? Even if it was, it hardly seemed to be anything of a value worth stressing over.

"Please!" A haunted look came over the shopkeep's dark features, and he reached into his pocket, and pulled out a few Arabic Duel Monsters cards. The archeologist's eyebrows shot up - those, at least, his son was interested in, and since most countries in this part of the world had banned them, they were quite rare. "I will even throw in some of these. Just, please buy." A strange expression crossed the shopkeeper's face, and his voice changed slightly, becoming more monotone, "Your son would like it very much."

The archeologist stared in disbelief. A cold chill ran down his spine, and the air seemed to still. The sudden tension made him hesitant to question the oddity of the situation, and he quickly handed over the amount of money marked on a small paper tag attached to the ring. Mechanically, he walked off, the pendulums of the ring clinking together musically.

The shopkeeper let out a sigh of relief once the archeologist took that accursed ring away. He felt genuinely sorry for his customer's son. He didn't know why the ring was so insistent on being sold just then, or why it was attached to those cards, but it had been screaming at him the entire time, in its voiceless, silent way. Nor did he know why the archeologist had seemed unaware of the bad vibes everyone else that came in contact with that thing felt. The ring had been ruining his business since it and the cards it had with it came into his acquisition months ago.

But it was gone, and that's all that mattered to the shopkeeper.

And all that mattered to Dr. Bakura was that he now had a gift for his son.

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